


Second Chances

by wintercreek



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Yahtzee's Star Trek Drabblefests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-14
Updated: 2009-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:08:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What James Kirk didn't know he'd get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 2. Kirk, second chances, from the Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challenge.

James T. Kirk learned young that the world is full of people who wish you well. His father unquestionably had, dying so Jim and his mother could escape. His mother had too; for all that she'd taken herself away from him and back in to space, he knew she'd done it so he'd know not to be afraid. She'd wanted to give him the stars.

Captain Pike was just more of the same, daring him to be better than his father's record. It was familiar, though, the good intentions behind the words, so Jim went for it. He'd thought the Academy would be just a string of people impressed by his father's memory, telling him they had high hopes.

What Jim didn't know he could have is a friend who cursed his name on a daily basis, who jabbed him with hypospray after hypospray and chuckled as his fingers swelled, who spent every shuttle ride close to leaving his lunch on Jim's lap, and whose hands were light on his forehead the first time he caught a fever from an offworld excursion. Bones is somehow always there when Jim wakes up in the infirmary, even when they're cadets with incompatible schedules.

The strangest truth, though, is the one Jim learns in an ice cave at the hands of an old Vulcan. The meld is intended to convey information about the Romulans, but the rest of it bleeds through - that they are the oldest and dearest of lifelong friends. That in some other universe, Jim was never alone. Even when they were apart, he was never alone. Spock withdraws his hand and mind, but in his eyes is still the promise. He believes that this is for Jim in this universe, too.

In a galaxy full of people who wish him well, the ones that matter to Jim Kirk are the ones who have his back. He'd gladly trade all the wishes of his youth for the sure knowledge he has now: that Spock will be wordlessly, solidly beside him and Bones will be there, grumbling and gentle, every time. And if it took twenty-some years to find them, well. They've got forever in front of them now.


End file.
